A praise (until now) to UPS

[Marco Bernardini]

A box of copies of my most recent (not my "last" :biggrin book, printed somewhere in French Bretagne, yesterday at 20.55 left Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande, (95 miles south of Omaha Beach) and today at 21.15 arrived in Milan after a 2 hrs stop in Chilly Mazarin, near the Paris Orly airport, and 1 hr stop in Feyzin, suburbs of Lyon (there are yummy pastries, in that area…): a 638 mi trip.
Now I'm curious to know how much it will take to UPS to make the last 145 mi, since for some couriers I live into a "remote" area (I'm not in the Okavango delta, anyway… but just a runway length from the beach).
Delivery is scheduled for Thursday in the late afternoon, we'll see.

 

[LEEQ]

Sounds speedy so far. ) what is the book about?

 

[Marco Bernardini]

Sounds speedy so far. ) what is the book about?

The book is an Italy-centric technical-philosophical-sociological view of the Internet, with some story, gossips, tips&tricks, etc.
Often I was very critical about some mainstream concepts like, e.g., the idea the "invention" (*) of the movable type printing by Gutenberg made everybody "smarter" or, at least "literate". Actually in 1300, a century before Gutenberg, a Tuscan merchant had an archive of over 150,000 handwritten reports from his agents located worldwide, so this means a lot of people knew how to read, write and communicate. The same is for the use of the Net before Facebook… everything was there, ready to be used, and many people used that.
Another myth I busted was that of high-speed Internet access making people "smarter": it is almost useless to receive a page in 0.1 seconds rather than 10 seconds, if the reader need 10 minutes to read -and understand - it
I also wrote a whole chapter about the advantages of knowing many languages to get unfiltered informations, so don't think to see an English translation soon :biggrin:
About the shipping, at 07.29 this morning the box arrived at the deposit 15 km from my home, so I think today I'll have my books.


(*) Actually Gutenberg just re-used existing things (wine presses, paper, ink and movable types) in a different way. Aldus Manutius from Venice, instead, invented the "pocket books", reducing costs on paper, ink and shipping, giving a bigger boost to books spreading.

 

[Marco Bernardini]

This afternoon… :ups:
Thanks, UPS!

 

[LEEQ]

My hat off to you. It's got to be pretty cool to know that someone thinks the world wants to hear what you have to say enough to publish a book (or books) for you. Congrats on the ups man too. I got an er40 collet holder for my lathe from my ups guy today. How exiting, like Christmas.

 

[Walt]

The book is an Italy-centric technical-philosophical-sociological view of the Internet, with some story, gossips, tips&tricks, etc.
Often I was very critical about some mainstream concepts like, e.g., the idea the "invention" (*) of the movable type printing by Gutenberg made everybody "smarter" or, at least "literate". Actually in 1300, a century before Gutenberg, a Tuscan merchant had an archive of over 150,000 handwritten reports from his agents located worldwide, so this means a lot of people knew how to read, write and communicate. The same is for the use of the Net before Facebook… everything was there, ready to be used, and many people used that.
Another myth I busted was that of high-speed Internet access making people "smarter": it is almost useless to receive a page in 0.1 seconds rather than 10 seconds, if the reader need 10 minutes to read -and understand - it
I also wrote a whole chapter about the advantages of knowing many languages to get unfiltered informations, so don't think to see an English translation soon :biggrin:
About the shipping, at 07.29 this morning the box arrived at the deposit 15 km from my home, so I think today I'll have my books.


(*) Actually Gutenberg just re-used existing things (wine presses, paper, ink and movable types) in a different way. Aldus Manutius from Venice, instead, invented the "pocket books", reducing costs on paper, ink and shipping, giving a bigger boost to books spreading.

Thanks for sharing a summary of your work, it sounds interesting.

If more information made people smarter, life would be much simpler.

 

[Marco Bernardini]

My hat off to you. It's got to be pretty cool to know that someone thinks the world wants to hear what you have to say enough to publish a book (or books) for you. Congrats on the ups man too. I got an er40 collet holder for my lathe from my ups guy today. How exiting, like Christmas.

A book avoid me to become boring repeating every time the same discourses :biggrin:
Many friends asked me various questions about the Internet, so I made a sort of collective reply.

Thanks for sharing a summary of your work, it sounds interesting.

If more information made people smarter, life would be much simpler.

It's not just the quantity of informations, but also the quality.
Who cares about how many cereals Justin Bieber eats for breakfast?
:roflmao: